Indian parents prefer sons

About 77% of Indian parents expect to live with their sons when they grow old and only 7% consider living with their daughters in the last phase of their lives, finds an India Human Development Survey (IHDS).Conducted jointly by researchers from University of Maryland and National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi, the findings are from the IHDS-2 (2011-12) data-set and covering a representative sample of 41,554 households across 33 states and union territories in both rural and urban areas. In Haryana, the state with India’s lowest child sex ratio (834 females per 1,000 males), 90% of respondents said they would prefer to live with their sons in old age rather than their daughters.Maharashtra was next, with 85% of parents saying they expected support from sons. Many Indians want to give birth to at least one daughter.While 73% of the people surveyed said they should ideally have one daughter, 11% said they should ideally have two daughters.While as many as 60% said they ideally wanted one son, 26% said they wanted two sons.While more people (73%) want at least one daughter, when asked preferences for an extra child, only six said they wanted daughters. How many sons or daughters would they ideally prefer to have?